CORTINA D'AMPEZZO, Italy — Just two days ago, American skier Jackie Wiles had sobbed near the finish line after missing a medal by barely a quarter-second in the Olympic downhill race.
On Tuesday, she was leaping for joy on the podium in Cortina after finishing in third place in the team combined, with an American flag draped around her shoulders and the brand new bronze medal hanging from her neck.
"I feel like I'm going to wake up from a dream at some point," Wiles said after the race. "To be on the good side of it today is a feeling I'll never forget."
Wiles, 33, and her teammate Paula Moltzan, 31, together won the bronze medal in the inaugural Olympic women's team combined event, in which two skiers compete as a team, one skiing the downhill and another skiing the slalom.
Wiles had the fourth fastest downhill time, and Moltzan matched that result in the slalom, for a combined time of 2:21.91.
Austria's Ariane Raedler and Katharina Huber won gold with a combined time of 2:21.66, while Germany's Kira Weidle-Winkelmann and Emma Aicher won silver with a time of 2:21.71.
The result was a surprise for the top U.S. team of Breezy Johnson, who won the downhill gold medal on Sunday, and Mikaela Shiffrin, the world's top slalom skier and the winningest Alpine skier of all time.
Johnson opened the competition with the fastest downhill time, which put the duo in strong contention for a medal. But Shiffrin, who hasn't finished outside the top ten in a World Cup slalom race in over two years, skied a second behind the slalom leader and dropped the pair into fourth place.
"[Breezy] went out, and she just backed it up with another incredible performance, a beautiful downhill run," Shiffrin told reporters after. "I was so inspired by that. And I was really taking that into my own mentality, coming out for the for the solid run and didn't quite nail it."
Shiffrin is the most decorated skier in the history of the sport, with 108 World Cup wins to her name, far more than anyone else, man or woman.
But the Olympics have given her trouble: At the Winter Games in 2022, Shiffrin ambitiously entered all six events but came away empty-handed. On her podcast, Shiffrin recently said that she was still working to "unpack" what had happened.
Tuesday's race was Shiffrin's first appearance at the 2026 Games, and it marked her seventh consecutive Olympic event in which she failed to medal.
"I didn't quite find a comfort level that allows me to produce full speed," Shiffrin said afterward. "So I'm going to have to learn what to do, what to adjust in the short time we have before the other [technical discipline] races."
Coming into Milano-Cortina, the U.S. women's Alpine team was expected to be a powerhouse. In addition to Shiffrin, the team included 41-year-old Lindsey Vonn, the world's top-ranked downhill skier who had made a remarkable career comeback this season before tearing her ACL last month. Then, in Sunday's much-anticipated downhill race, Vonn crashed hard and had to be airlifted off the course.
The emotions of Sunday's downhill race lingered over Tuesday's competition. Sofia Goggia, the beloved 33-year-old Italian skier, lost control on a turn during the downhill leg and recorded a DNF.
Afterward, Goggia told reporters that she had exchanged text messages with Vonn on Monday and felt her suffering. "Mentally, it was really hard to deal with [Sunday]," Goggia said. "I felt today at the start I didn't have the same tension or the same focus I had on Sunday. I was focused on the race, but inside myself I felt I was not so charged up."
On Sunday, the race had paused for around 20 minutes while Vonn received medical attention. Wiles, who was racing just four spots behind Vonn, was forced to endure the wait atop the mountain then race just minutes after a helicopter carried her teammate away.
To finish fourth after that emotional effort was gutting, Wiles said Sunday. "At my age, I don't have many chances left. It hurts. It's really hard," she said, her eyes teary, her voice wobbling. "I'm trying to look ahead. I still have more racing. That's all I can do."
And she did. A pep talk later Sunday night from Moltzan helped them both focus on Tuesday's race, they said. "She said that she couldn't cry anymore, and I said, 'All right, then let's move on and focus for tomorrow,'" Moltzan said. "I just told her I believed in her."
The team format has replaced the traditional individual combined event in international ski racing, as the speed and technical disciplines have diverged to the point where it has become rare for skiers to race in both.
"We had slalom skiers that looked like Bambi on ice in the downhill track and downhillers who looked like they needed a compass to get through the slalom course, and very few that could actually do both," said Johan Eliasch, president of the International Ski and Snowboard Federation, known as FIS.
The 2026 Winter Games were the Olympic debut of the new format. On Tuesday, Eliasch called the results a "spectacular success."
"We have exactly what we want, which is the best athletes, the best format, in the best sport. So this is definitely here to stay," Eliasch said.
Copyright 2026 NPR
